After almost 7 months, I am happy to announce that the Tadog Paths and Railway systems are finally completed and back to its former glory, and as a better version of itself. Feel free to start using the pathway, and read the last few paragraphs to learn about building along the pathways!

*NOTE:* Sorry about the length of this. It was intended to be a small article but then I felt extra inspired to add in extra details. Navigate this article by the section headers, otherwise scroll to the bottom for the TL; DR

To see this map in more detail, click on this image here, or in your browser visit: https://mc.kirk55.com/news/image/original/117.png

As some of you may or may not know, in August of 2023, the server map size had begun to outgrow itself, with much of the map being old terrain generation from years past. While most servers would probably just wipe the entire map and start over, this server had a different approach. Instead of wiping the entire map and regenerating it, the server instead used multiple methods to identify uninhabited and unused chunks of the map. With identifying these unused chunks, these chunks were deleted and regenerated with the most recent terrain generator, bringing in new biomes, resources, and land terrain, all while keeping all existing builds. In this process, I had the choice of either wiping all the Tadog Path & Railway system, or to preserve all of it.

Despite having a very effective biome blender, it was decided that the paths would not look or operate correctly. The Tadog Path & Railway system is designed to weave through natural terrain to connect villages and settlements, much like highways in the real world. From this, it was decided that the Tadog Path & Railway system would be deleted, and would have to completely be rebuilt. The only surviving parts of the path were the parts in and nearest to a town or other settlement that was preserved. Despite now having to rebuild the paths from scratch, this reset gave birth to an opportunity to improve on the path design and build theory.

For those who do not know, the Tadog Path & Railway system started out as a personal use path in November of 2020 to deliver horses from my house to my shop in the downtown. While there was no water between my house and downtown, I often found myself losing a lot of time over trying to traverse through trees on horseback. At the time, I did not anticipate the path becoming public, and did not build the path to be as efficient or aesthetically pleasing as it could be. Improving on the current pathway had been a daunting task, and one I did not want to do. With the reset of the map however, I was able to implement these long-awaited improvements.

As of the writing of this article, there are currently no new destinations from the path system before the chunk reset. In fact, there is one less destination from before due to its lack of use. Overall, the path and railway distances have not changed much since the settlements and villages it connects have not changed their location. The only difference with path and rail distance is only seen in where the path travels due to the changed terrain. However, despite there not being many changes on a broad scale, on a more detailed scale the path has gotten many improvements. Since the path was all rebuilt in survival, many players have already been using the path and railway system as it has been built, so some of these changes will be old news to some.

Of all the improvements made to the path, this is the biggest. When the pathways were first built, they were only meant to be a personal transportation method for horses. Since then, however, the paths have been used by many players for more than just horses. With the introduction of larger mobs such as Camels, the 2-block wide path was begging to become too small to traverse efficiently. However, between the nearby railway and my terrain build style, simply going on the entire path and widening it would be a much harder challenge other than just dealing with the narrow path. Even with some of the existing path that had been saved as mentioned earlier, widening those sections of pathways had proved to be a challenge.

This also included bridges and tunnels, which were previously only two blocks wide, and tunnels had only been three blocks high. The construction of the new path has changed the path, bridges, and tunnels to all be three blocks wide. Tunnels, and tree clearings, are now four blocks tall to accommodate taller mobs.

This improvement is not a big one, but one goal I have for my path is to be as realistic as possible, but mostly to make the path blend with the terrain as much as possible to preserve the natural terrain and provide a realistic look. While the previous path did not fail at this much, the new path has reduced the number of edges with no blocks, and all walls along the path and railway cuts have a “Retaining Wall” to represent a more realistic road and look.

This improvement is not a new addition. As some of you may have noticed, the bridges on the first pathway had torches. In the construction of the first path, adding torches were just seen as an architectural look. As I built more paths, adding torches became too labor intensive and expensive and I stopped. Since then, torches are no longer expensive for me. At the time however, I did not consider mobs spawning on the bridges, This is especially dangerous because the bridges are fenced on both sides, which can trap a player who runs into a mob that spawns on the bridge. With the new construction, all bridges now include torches that run on both railings and illuminate the bridges so mobs will not spawn.

Beware though, mobs still will spawn on the path as those are not lit up. I hope to one day in the future find an efficient way to have the entire path lit up. For now, beware travelling at night.

Lastly, path distances were not properly recorded to a single datasheet or book. In the beginning, I would measure a path and record the measurement on a sign on the path and call it good. However, as time progressed and more paths were added and existing paths changed slightly, I was losing track of all what signs I had placed, and would often miscalculate or forget to change signs. With the new construction, all path sections and distances are accurately recorded to the block in a single book, so then signs can be accurately adapted if needed.

This is a small, but important improvement. At the time of the construction of the first railway, the powered rails were much more expensive for me to get, and similarly difficult to power. It was common that someone, or me, would be riding on the railway, only to find out a prankster had turned off all the powered rails. Sometimes even if the rails were not tampered with, there was not enough to propel you onward.

With this improvement, the railway now has many more powered rails to assist in less slowdowns. Also, the powered rails are powered in a different way now. Much so more hidden that for a prankster to turn them off would require them to grief, and is something that would catch the attention of people like Kelsifur.

This is not much so an improvement, but rather a methodology change. Before, the rails would hardly ever come near to, or cross over the pathway unless it was necessary. This led to a lot of funky looking railways and an efficient rail path and waste of space. Upon travelling the path now, you will notice that quite often the railway will cross and run on top of the pathway. This will improve on the railway with distance and avoid awkward directions, but mostly this will improve with use of space, and allow more people to build along the path if they wish, and preserve more of the natural beauty.

*PLEASE READ ALL THE SIGNS INSIDE THE NEW RAIL STATIONS!!*

For the railways, this is by far one of the greatest, yet most challenging improvements. As some of you may have known, I sell villagers. This is something I still do, however I have not yet been able to rebuild the infrastructure for it. For this selling system, I had planned that the railways would be the main mode of transportation not only for villagers, but for any mob. As with all of my pathways, the intention of this was that it could be used by everyone on the server, bot just me. However, the way rail stations were set up at the time would not allow for just anybody to do this.

All of my railways on the server are connected via Railway Stations. These Railway Stations act as hubs where multiple railways come together, or just where people might want to stop at villages or towns. In places like the Downtown, there are five rail stations in total to help connect local railway lines, and provide stops for various parts of the downtown to reduce on walking travel. However, to move from one track to the next, you would have to exit the minecart, break it, then place it on the next railway and continue. Not only was this just a minor inconvenience, this made travelling mobs impossible, unless I manually went through and made manual bypasses.

To help make mob travel possible, and player travel more convent, the rail stations have now been being remodeled to include redstone technology to make intersections instead of endings. This was easy with only two-way stops, however having three- or four-way intersections can make this challenging. Currently, only about half of all the rail stations on the server have been upgraded to this type, as the engineering required is a bit complicated, and more space is typically used. As time progresses, I will work to make this possible for all server rail stations, in the hopes of having a non-exit-the-minecart travel experience.

As seen to the left, a general look inside the new rail station design for a three way. If you are starting your travel from one of these rail stations, you will place your minecarts on the powered rails as shown here. Once you do, you will see some signs and buttons as shown in the next picture. These are important and will determine where you are going.

Whether you are coming from a different rail station or placed your minecart down, you will see this to the right. From here, will not need to exit the minecart unless you wish to stay where this rail station is. From here, you read the signs to determine which location you want to go to, and press the button. It is that simple!

For those who do not know, underneath the Tadog Mercantile is a large map room where all paths, railways, cities along the railways, and some other communities are mapped. To get there, teleport to the Tadog Mercantile teleporter, the icon is an Iron Nugget. Then, walk forward a few blocks, and you will see a hole in the ground, with a sign that labels it as the Tadog map room. Being deep below the ground, there is usually a lot less lag than the surface of the Downtown has. In this room you will find one large map of all my railways, and in a side room you will find maps of various villages, builds, and cities. Each of the places mapped have historical maps that you can look through and see what everything used to look like!

Remember that breaking any block is considered grief! While many people grief my pathways (and go to jail) the most common grief I get on my railways is the glass at the entrances and exits of every railway tunnel. This grief is mostly accidental, or without malicious intent. I will remind you that the glass at the railway tunnels is important, because they prevent most types of hostile mobs from getting inside and causing an issue! The rail tunnels are purely meant for minecart travel only, there should never be a situation where you are walking through the railway tunnel because there is always a pathway tunnel right next to it!

If you did not know, I do allow, and encourage, you to build your base or town along my pathway! The pathway is designed to connect bases and towns in the server, while also making rural areas on the server more accessible. With building along my path, I just require that your builds follow a few simple regulations:

1. There must be at least a two-block space between your build and the pathway and/or railway. The only exception to this rule is trees. If you decide to plant trees, please be sure that the tree is at least one block away from the railway and/or pathway. If any tree leaves happen to grow over the pathway or railways, please be sure to break the leaves so there is a four-block clearance above the path, and at least a two-block clearance above the railway.

2. Ensure there is proper clearance above both the railway and pathway. As mentioned before with the trees, If any tree leaves happen to grow over the pathway or railways, please be sure to break the leaves so there is a four-block clearance above the path, and at least a two-block clearance above the railway.

3. Moving the pathway or railway physically. If you are building a town or base and feel like the path should be moved to better fit around your builds, please do so! The point of the path is to integrate with builds, so if you want the pathway to be moved so it can be the main road in your town, feel free to do it. MOST IMPORTANTLY if you do this, please publicly say in chat that you are moving the path. Otherwise, admins may think you are griefing and put you in jail. If you do this, please let me know either on discord, or in-game. I will still want to come by and look to make sure everything works properly, but more likely than not I will think it is perfectly fine.

4. Rail stations. To help keep simplicity of the railways, you are not allowed to build any sort of rail station for the railway. If you want to, you may modify the railway a bit so you can enter the railway (shown in some pictures later). If you would like there to be a railway at your build, please ask me and I will see if it will be a good idea! If not, I will most likely just be wanting to see a bit more progress of the build before I add an official stop.

If you are wanting to use the railway but are not near a rail station, here is a simple intersection you can build along the railway without disrupting the railway flow! As always, please be mindful of where this is being built, you may not do this on top of the pathway, so pick a good spot!

First, you can build a general T intersection. With this method, you can push the minecart down your rail, and then it gets to the T intersection, the minecart will be on the Railway System, and you can push it to whichever direction you want! However, be careful you are not too close to powered rail, or are on an incline. This will cause the minecart to either go downhill right when it gets to the T intersection, or if you have a mob in a minecart and it hits the powered rail, it will take off without you!

Secondly, if you want to get fancier you can build a two-way intersection. Like the T intersection, you can push the minecart onto the rails of the Railway System. But in this design, you push onto a curved rail, and since the minecart has momentum, it will hit the curved rail, but continue straight! With this method, you can get the minecart to go any direction you want without having to push it around as much. However, you will have to find a corner to do this on. If you are on a straight away, you are not allowed to modify the railway so you can build this intersection.

Aside from these, if your railway is at least four blocks above the path, does not touch the path, and does not run alongside the path, you may build your personal railway wherever you want! If I decide to put in a rail station, it may require some railway changes. MOST IMPORTANTLY, if you are transporting mobs, it is ok to temporarily break the railway so you can get the minecarts off the main Railway System onto your personal rail system, or wherever the exit is. Like mentioned earlier, please publicly say in chat you are doing this to avoid getting jailtime.

As a final reminder, you are responsible for all and any grief you may intentionally or accidentally cause! Even if I do not immediately notice it, it could be 2 days or 2 months but I will eventually find out! If a creeper blows up any parts of the paths or railways, please tell me! You will not be in trouble for accidentally blowing up the path if you tell me. If the grief is unreported, you may end up with some jailtime. Of course, I always appreciate if you fix your own grief, but if you decide to do that, please fix it properly. Improper repair of the system will be as if it was not repaired at all. Even if you fix it yourself, please still tell me! If you see someone else’s grief, please let me know about that too!

Lastly, the pathways and railways are constantly changing! The destinations shown in this article are just what is built at the time of this writing. These destinations are already pre-existing from before the chunk reset. In the next few weeks, I plan to begin building more pathways to more destinations on the server, I already have a few in mind. As always with the construction of the pathways, the paths are always built and completed first, then the railways. Be sure to check the map room to see any updated destination changes, and chances are I will probably announce with new destinations are added. Eventually, I hope to have all server villages and cities mapped with a road and railway to them!

To see this map in more detail click on this image here, or in your browser, visit: https://mc.kirk55.com/news/image/original/117.png

After a few months of closure, the Tadog Railways and Pathways are finally open! The paths and rails during the re-construction got a makeover and both the path and railways now have better improvements. The rail stations are still being upgraded so when you travel to a rail station, you do not have to exit out of the minecart. I always encourage people to explore the path and build their next base and/or city along the pathway. If you are interested in doing this, scroll up a bit and read about the small requirements for this. Lastly, posted above is a map of the railway system as of April 16, 2024. As time goes on I will be adding more destinations to the path, so be sure to be on the lookout for announcements on those when they are finally completed.